We always make ours with fresh French Bread that has been cut into 1" +- chunks and then let dry out for 24 hours.

This time I used homemade broth. I also used fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme as the herbs therein. (Sounds a bit like a song. ?) OH! and also chicken fat instead of butter. This last time I forgot to put in any onions and everyone liked it "Best of All". (wonder why. ;-) Lots of good stuff in there. )

Kate's method yields tasty results because she uses bread with good structure, dries it so that the bread can absorb flavor, adds fat for richness and includes flavor via stock, herbs, seasoning. In general I'd keep the onion. Some people saute the onion and celery, some toss in raw. A few eggs are nice . My mom used poultry seasoning but I prefer fresh individual herbs over a dried mix.

So I guess there is no rescue for old cheap hot dog buns then? :)

I do the same as Kate, except I use sourdough. Any other ingredients vary but always with fresh seasonings and stock or broth

I pink, save the stale hot dog buns for bread crumbs :-)

One 9 inch pan of cornbread plus 2 slices of sandwich bread. Add 1 cup of chopped onion and 1 cup of chopped celery, either cooked in butter or stewed in broth. One egg and 1 small container of oysters, chopped. Omit oysters if you don't like. Add broth until moist, either turkey or chicken. Season to taste with poultry seasoning. Cook in pan at 350* until firm and crispy at edges.

ETA: We like ours in a pan, "dressing". if you like stuffing in a bird, just make it much less moist, and stuff. It will need to be cooked to at least 165* measured at the thickest part of the stuffing, which usually, to me, overcooks the bird. That is why we like the dressing in a pan and the bird cooked separate.

I gave up trying to use stale bread - mostly because I never have enough nowadays - and use this. It's delicious:

I wish they still made a cornbread one as well.

IMO, stale or old bread is better for pudding and croutons anyway.

I use old hot dog buns, cubed, soaked in milk and squeezed some. Definitely use butter sauteed onions, celery with leaves, spices of boxed poultry mix, but also more dried sage, an egg, and chicken broth. If I have leftover cornbread (not too much) I add that, and bits of leftover brioche bread. I put leftover or dried out bread pieces in the freezer and layout all the cubes including fresh, to dry out for a day. And, don't forget the salt and especially freshly ground black pepper.

ATK or CC ( can't remember which one) did a test a few years ago of air-dried bread cubes vs oven-dried and they said the oven-dried method was better. I tried the oven-dried once and really couldn't tell the difference so I just use air-dried as it doesn't take any electricity or gas. I will confess I tried using leftover slightly stale buns once but was very disappointed. If I use regular storebought bread I buy one of the better Italian-style breads with thicker slices. The real trick is the balance between too moist and too dry. I'm still trying to figure that out myself!

It has taken me decades but I finally got my mother's stuffing right. The flavor was never an issue. The texture was. The key, for me, is the chicken stock. Whether it's dry bread or matzah (which is also dry), I need something like double the amount of stock my mother told me, as well as a little more fat. It's important not to drown it or the bread in the bottom will turn to bread soup.

Congrats on your "better than usual!" A good big step in the right direction. Duck schmaltz is brilliant. I love it, especially when I can get it fresh from the butcher rather than in a jar. At this point, I think all you need is to make it a few more times. :)

Pink, If he can eat celery leaves and onion salt, he is not allergic, he just doesn't like the chunks or texture, (my husband), use the Oxo garlic press and finely mush up, technical cooking term, lol. both.

Yes, it's a sensitivity thing with his ulcerative colitis. He's ok with a little bit so I can sneak it in. I stuffed the roast chicken with onion rings so anyone who wanted roasted onions could add those. Mom always used celery seed or celery leaves in cooking for the flavor. I like all kinds of things in my dressing but my husband and father are very traditional and conservative. Which is why my usual dressing is so bland. But the little bit of duck fat and mixing matzoh with bread really added some good new flavors. Of course they were actually really OLD flavors from my youth and Sunday dinner at Bubbes, but new for me. I'm mostly vegetarian and even when I eat meat, chicken schmaltz or duck fat would not be items you would typically find in my fridge, unlike my grandmother, who used schmaltz for a lot of things . . .

I am allergic to any member of the allium family. It's not fun. It also makes dressing/stuffing not nearly as good but I use a good mix of herbs to make up for it.

My picky stuffing eaters don't like mushrooms, spinach, nuts or dried fruits either, things that could compensate for lack of onions and celery. Pft. Woe unto me the time I added chopped Chinese pea pods or water chestnuts!

There are some big texture bombs in that list. Have you tried turnips? Dice small and pre-roast. I've used them when I couldn't use alliums and they bring a lot of flavor, but have a lot less water so can't just start on a quick saute. With some roasted caramelization and soften to a pleasant state, rather than rooty crunch, they're really quite decent.

The mushrooms are hard to replace because of the umami, but you could try mushroom powder instead of salt (it's very salty, I assume because it would otherwise get a little damp and turn into a brick).

I think leaves and celery seed, if that's okay with the sufferer's gut, is a brilliant way to bring the celeriness without any actual celery. Another way to get some of the greenness is to use overgrown broccoli stems. The kind they put in broccoli slaw. They don't have a lot of flavor or taste particularly broccoli-ish, though that might work better raw. They're a similar kind of texture cooked down, though. They too have a lot of water.

My grandmother made stuffing/dressing from mostly cornbread similar to what @Sherry8aNorthAL described. She always said that you know it has enough moisture when you press down lightly on the top of the mixture with a spoon and some liquid flows into the spoon.

Just to clarify, cornbread can soak up a lot more liquid than open crumb dried bread. Matzah can be pretty dense, though. :)

She always said that you know it has enough moisture when you press down lightly on the top of the mixture with a spoon and some liquid flows into the spoon.

precisely the way my grandmother said ... and no two stuffings were ever exactly alike, because of what what was/wasn't available ... it was done in a separate pan and was always good and not 'heavy' ... and was always better the next day.

Would cut slices of it and make a stuffing sandwich ...

I have to say I think it was the addition of one egg that made the difference this time. It added flavor and some springy-ness. Also the duck fat, which added flavor. Plus the matzoh, which just gave it a sentimental memory flavor. Stands to reason the best dressing would be made with the best bread, but toasting and seasoning well helps with something more marginal. Anyone can make great stuffing with great bread, the trick is good stuffing with whatever gets left over. It will be great with some meat added on the second day too . . . although I only have a tiny bit left.

Leftover hot dog buns were used for garlic toast when I was a kid, and we were happy the few times a year that garlic bread was served with the frequently served pasta. I never had any other kind of garlic bread at home... not something mom would spend money to buy. Open up the buns, butter each slice and sprinkle with garlic salt or rub with a cut clove of garlic.

But who knows, maybe some of the stuffing we ate had leftover buns in it, too. I do know that very little went to waste around our kitchen and I learned "creative" cooking at a young age.

In addition to my basic dressing above, I have added thyme, rosemary, parsley, etc. That would help with the lack of celery and onion. If you don't scream and flinch at canned soup, the Campbell's mushroom soup adds flavor. You can also buy just necks or backs,simmer, and use the meat and broth from them. If they can tolerate the taste, but not the actual fiber from onion and celery. keep in big chunks while simmering, and remove before using the broth.

And yes, I have used stale buns before also. Really, any bread is fine. It is just to help hold the dressing together. A lot of people use a sleeve of saltine crackers. I taste my dressing before cooking and add as needed to taste. Yes, after the raw egg or two. I have been doing it for fifty plus years and I have never been sick from that.

Only 1 egg in 20,000 is diseased. That's why they say the big problem is buckets of raw eggs, like they used to use for short order scrambles (one ladle full on the flattop at a time). Good food handling practices are good, no matter how rare the disease is. For me, I'm a bit fanatic about my hands and implements that touch raw egg and could cross contaminate the kitchen, and pasteurize eggs for mayonnaise and other uncooked uses, but have no issues tasting something with raw egg in it. I'm not good at knowing when the dressing tastes right, though. I usually use poultry seasoning, but only for stuffing, and totally didn't realize I'd run out last time and hadn't replaced it. I just grabbed the first recipe off the web and made my own and it was coarser, but tasted fine.

The issue with standard packaged hotdog and hamburger buns is the texture. They're very directional, soft and squishy, even when dry. They turn to mush really fast. That means in stuffing, some buns, especially cut small, make for nice soft spots that can hold a lot of flavor. When the proportion of buns to stronger breads gets too large, however, it leads to a much gooeyer stuffing.

Mandelin--little dry crunchy choux puffs made from matzah meal--react similarly to buns in the stuffing.

Thinking about this, reminded me of something I thought of this year which may be why it came out so well, finally. Mother's stuffing is basically sauteed veg, poultry seasoning, mixed breads or mixed matzahs, eggs and stock. Lightbulb moment. It felt like making bread pudding, but with stock instead of milk (though the eggs and stock go in separately). I'm really good at bread pudding, though, and I think aiming for bread pudding, turkey style, is what made it come out so well.

If you are having trouble with bread and seasoning for stuffing....try Pepperidge Farms bagged stuffing...not the stuff in cubes but very coarse seasoned bread crumbs....then add "adornments"...it may not be grandma's but it's pretty darned good.

This is the recipe I used.... with the subs listed above:

Classic Stuffing Recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 1 lb bread cut into 1-inch cubes - about 12 cups (see note)
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter/ chicken smaltz
• 2 cups chopped yellow onion ???
• 1 1/2 cups chopped celery
• 1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh sage
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme (sticks discarded)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon ground pepper
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups broth

INSTRUCTIONS

• You can dry your bread cubes two ways:
  Place your bread cubes in a large bowl and them them sit on the counter covered for 1-2 days to dry out. Stir the bread cubes every once in a while.
  If you don't have time to air-dry your bread, you can toast them. Lay bread cubes on baking sheets in a single layer and toast at 250 degrees for 45-60 minutes stirring every once in a while. Transfer bread cubes to a large bowl.

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.

• In a skillet, melt the butter and add the onion and celery. Sautee until vegetables are soft. Pour mixture into the bowl with the bread. Add the parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper. Stir together.

• In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs. Add the chicken broth and whisk together. Pour mixture over bread cubes and mix well. Pour into prepared baking dish. Cover with foil and bake for35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 10-15 minutes until top is golden brown and middle is set

My family's cornbread dressing is really stale unsweetened cornbread and stale biscuits. The rest of the ingredients are chopped celery, chopped onions, poultry broth, salt, pepper and sage. I like extra strong homemade broth, but I once saw my mother use canned cream of chicken soup. I was flabbergasted, but it worked just fine. Anyway, biscuits are a quick, cheap bread for dressing/stuffing. You don't have to be able to make beautiful light biscuits. Even hard little hockey pucks work for dressing. Just bake, crumble and let 'em dry out for several hours.